For those of you who may not know me, I am a music production major at a media arts school (Full Sail University, anyone?). Before I transferred there, I was at a local community college taking gen eds up the rear. Awful awful stuff, gen eds. It was at this community college that I took very few major related courses. Two of the biggest courses toward my degree (at the community college) were Music Theory and Electronic Music. Unfortunately for me, they were both taught by the same professor. This man is seriously one of the dumbest smart people I know. He is extremely intelligent-but he is as dumb as a sack of rocks. During theory he was adamant about avoiding parallel fifths (two notes-a fifth apart-continued at a fifth apart throughout the melody and harmony). He decided to show us the horror his college professor had about the topic-“Stay outta Chinatown!”
As if Chinatown had criminal activity or something, get real, it’s not the Southside of Chicago or anything. Back to the story: Somehow or another parallel fifths=Chinese music. Actually, now that I think about that, why is that a bad thing?! What if I wanted to write a song with a Chinese influence?! *WTF!!!!* Back to the story for real this time: Apparently this professor and his wife (God save her) had adopted a daughter from China (God save her too-in fact more so…she didn’t choose this), and when this daughter was first learning to play the piano she clearly started to play everything she learned in parallel fifths. Ok…really?! Really…so he’s saying that because she’s Chinese, she is naturally drawn to the parallel fifth sound?! LOLWOT?!
Electronic Music I let me see another side of this professor (other than the goofy, socially inept cave man who taught theory-same person). This side showed a more anal retentive, least creative arts teacher I’ve ever seen. EVERY computer in use had to be such a certain way, otherwise “it may not work.” Bullshit-I’ve used plenty of electronics to know that the background is not going to affect how ProTools runs. Now get out of my workspace before I go crazy. I felt quite sorry for the people in Electronic Music II who didn’t do anything different than we did-only they got to do it again…a real step up from the first course, eh? For our final, we had to do a song. So I take off doing my thing, and he comes by and previews the tracks we have at that time. He comments, “Oh you’re like a techno guy!” I just agreed so he’d go away sooner. (Having a clap on the 2nd and 4th beat=techno?...maybe.) On the day of the final, we were all to listen to all the songs the class had done while the teacher took notes and graded. Being as only 2, maybe 3 people actually showed up it was a short final period and we got to leave early-thank Yevon. However, we’re still there okay? My song plays, people are swaying in their seats to the beat (I’m lovin’ it) and then that asshat comments, “Real tongue-in-cheek. Watch out Weird Al!!”
Clearly his love for extreme jazz has seeped his mind and affected his taste in music. Now I’m not saying that my song was great or anything-BUT…Weird Al?! LOLWOT?! I blow it off attributing to it that it wasn’t his mightaswellbedubstep jazz.
Let it be known I did not take Electronic Music II. I did however take the second semester of Music Theory-then dropped it in time to get my money back because I didn’t want to put up with his sh*t. I start theory next month at Full Sail. OH YEVON GRANT ME YOUR WISDOM FOR I SHALL BE IN NEED.
KTHXBAI,
Silver